Nominal

The altimeter tells me we’re at thirty-seven thousand feet. Ahead of the cockpit window, a cloud sags in the sky.

Four and a half hours into my very first flight as a commercial captain. Four and a half hours spent relatively calm, which might be a personal record when you consider I’ve spent the better chunk of my life convinced that at any moment I’ll be responsible for some horrible disaster.

Today our path runs from Honolulu to Boston. Two hundred and eight souls on board, not counting my own.

From up high, everything and everyone looks small; almost ten times tinier than the size of the dolls my sister would place at miniature kitchen tables and push around in tiny, plastic cars.

My fingers drum a timid rhythm along the armrest—three taps, a brief pause, and three again—as I glance up to scan the instruments.

All clear. Everything normal. Altitude steady. Consistent airspeed.

Blinking screens around me all flash green and blue, a compact showcase of real-life physics at work. Meticulously engineered to track engine temps, fuel flow, and wind shifts.

I run my thumb over the scar on my wrist. My leg shifts slightly, until it meets the edge of my flight bag. A small, familiar weight slides around a little. I nudge the bag back into place. Then, three taps, pause, and three again.

“You’re doing the thing again,” First Officer Reeves says, sitting to the right of me. His seat groans as he sits up.

I don’t look over. Still, I catch myself, pausing mid-tap.

“What thing?”

The column control digs into my palm. It’s the yoke that steers the plane, firm under my grip.

“That tapping. You’ve been fidgeting since Honolulu, you know.” Reeves slouches back, a tiny smirk playing at the corners of his mouth. “You’re doing fine, okay? For a fish out of water, at least.”

I still don’t look at him. Haven’t looked at him much since takeoff. Focus stays on the horizon, and we both know this.

Reeves is maybe fifty-five, with this steel-gray military cut and a face weathered by years of pressurized air and seeing more neighborhood grids than people.

He often tries for this authoritative scowl, but smile lines around his eyes, deep grooves, give up his nature easily. Anyway, some drill sergeant sociopath wouldn’t have been so quick to pick up on my underlying emotional state.

“I’m not a fish out of water,” I say at last. I hate the defensiveness in my own voice.

“Sure you are, I can see it on your face,” he insists. “You’ll always be when you doubt your own competence.”

Sunlight flares through the glass, throwing his reflection on the windshield directly ahead of me, almost depicting him as some omnipotent giant.

“I—”

“Look at how you’ve been gripping that control column, like it owes you money.” He nods at my hand. “You keep checking the instruments even though everything is nominal, and has been nominal for the last four and a half hours.”

I blink, realizing with a start that my fingers have gone half-numb. How my hand is clammy around the control column, and, on further inspection, has developed red indents of its shape. I ease my grip. Rub the wrist scar.

Defeated, my eyes sweep the panel again. Everything normal. Everything perfect.

The Boeing 757 rumbles softly beneath us, indifferent to everything and everyone above. As we near the top of descent, the ozone smell grows stronger; a mixture of jet fuel traces and oxygen, all caused by cabin pressure.

“You ever wonder,” I blurt out, “if you’re actually good at all this? Or if you’re just lucky?”

“Sure,” says Reeves.

“Really?”

He grins wide. “No. I know I’m good.”

“You never think something’s going to happen?” The words trickle out like bile now. “Like, a disaster is waiting and you’re the only one blind to it?”

“That’s nerves talking,” Reeves insists, voice firm. “You should trust your instincts.”

“I’m not sure how.”

A weighty pause stretches between us.

“You know what your problem is?” he asks. I brace myself, because here we go. “You think too much. Instead of flying the damn plane, you’re running all these disaster scenarios, picturing every crash, every engine failure.”

“I’m not—”

“Oh, but you are. I can see it on your face, hear it in what you say.”

The radio crackles to life. “United 4-7-2, Boston Center, descend and maintain two-seven thousand.”

I grab the mic. My voice stays even. “United 4-7-2, descend and maintain two-seven thousand.”

When I let go of the button, I feel his eyes on me.

“What?” I snap.

“You do that well. The radio stuff, I mean.”

“Thanks.”

“See? You’re a natural at this,” Reeves presses on. “What is it that you’re so afraid of? I bet you follow all those superstitions, like saying hello to the damn plane.”

Heat gathers in my cheeks. I take a deep inhale. “It’s just a habit.”

“It’s a superstition,” he says, unfazed. “Like the thing with the watch.”

My muscles lock up.

A stubborn, heavy quiet clings to the air, sagging down with the weight of something unseen. The yoke is slick in my hand as the Boeing hums steady beneath us.

My gaze dares to dart in the direction of my flight bag.

I whip sharply to face him. “How did you know—”

“Because you always talk about it. It’s special to you, isn’t it? A keepsake, or something like that.”

The words hang in the cockpit for a long moment. “I never told you about my watch.”

His smile doesn’t waver. “Sure you have. We talked about it while we were checking the aircraft, don’t you remember?”

No such memory comes, and I’m not known to forget. I can think back to preflight, and the walk-around inspection, the careful examination of the control surfaces. But when I try to recall any interaction with Reeves, the memory slips through my fingers unnoticed.

My heart pounds now, breath coming shorter. Ragged, like breathing through a straw. The cockpit closes in around me—walls shrinking tight, the air too thin.

I force my gaze toward the panel.

I glance at the instruments—everything normal, everything perfect—and back at Reeves, whose smile stretches wider. Too wide, his eyes now narrow lines, unblinking.

He nods slowly, deliberately. Points to his own hands, before mimicking a rubbing motion. “Yeah, and the rubbing of that scar on your wrist, left wrist, underside, where the seatbelt latch bit yo—”

“United 4-7-2, turn left heading zero-niner-zero, descend and maintain one-eight thousand.”

The words crackle through the radio.

With a voice that comes out flat and robotic, I read it back. I turn. I descend. Altitude unwinds on the tape.

My free hand drops to my knee. Three taps, pause, three more taps. Fingers, shaking now, still know what to do, instinctively moving through the motions that have been drilled countless times.

“You never told a soul, did you?” Reeves goes on. His tone stays light and easy, like we’re talking at Sunday brunch amid floating laughter and stories. “Not the police, not your parents, not your friends. Everyone thought it was just an accident.”

Air catches in my throat. “Shut up, Reeves.”

My eyes flick down. Away from him. To the worn keyboard clipped to my thigh, scrawled with checklists and notes. My glance snags on the crew manifest, hastily scribbled during preflight.

Captain: Michael Torrence

First Officer: NONE - Solo qualification flight

The words blur for a beat.

“Oh, God,” I whisper. Sound barely comes out.

I can hardly bring myself to turn, even an inch. I fight it. Sweat beads on my neck. I can’t look.

Slowly, my head tilts to the right, and the seat is simply bare. Just empty space. No Reeves. No smile lines. No steel-gray hair. Just black leather. The seat, the entire cockpit, is devoid of life aside from me.

Save for my own ragged breaths, the entire space drones with solitude.

The pulse of the engine hums on, perpetually indifferent.